Stirring The Embers
by AzureTiger
Summary: Rabastan Le Strange contemplates life in Azkaban ... (work in progress) [All characters property of J.K. Rowling]


_I never knew there were so many shades of grey ..._

But all the days are grey anymore, the colour washed clean away. The floor here is cobbled stone, pitted and pocked, iron grey, with a silvery sheen when the water leaks in. And it's always doing that, headed in quick moving streams across the floor, past the bars of my cell and into the hall. Sometimes the flames from the candles lining the hallways dance are reflected in the water, leaping orange and red dancers, but like everything of colour and joy in this place they quickly flutter away into dark nothingness.

Outside a storm rages, but whether it's a rare summer gale or a harbinger of the cold gloom of winter it's hard to say. Time passes different in Azkaban, and I no longer have the desire to speculate on just how many years have passed since I came to this place. Over ten? It has to be at least a decade since Bartimus Crouch stood over us in his pulpit, face contorted in self-righteous fury and gave us all over to the Dementors. I can feel my mouth curl a bit at the thought of Barty Crouch, the young fool so sure that his own father would not sentence his only child to Azkaban. What made him think he was so above us? That he could worm away, denying it all, and walk away as if none of it had ever happened. The Dark Mark was burned into his arm the same as it was burned into mine. Into all of ours.

The threadbare gray robes are hardly enough to ward off any of the tendrils of cold that snake through the porous stones of the prison. I have had only seen the outside of this fortress prison three times. The first time was when they brought me here with my brother and his wife, and Barty, so we could await our trial. Barty had been shaking so much that the tremors coming from his pale body rocked the boat. Not that I hadn't felt cold, what with the Dementors hovering so close, the fabric of their tattered cloaks swaying in the breeze and stroking our bodies. Only Bella had seemed unaffected, sitting in the boat as if it was Cleopatra's barge and she the great Egyptian sorceress. She looked at Barty in utter disdain, his pale face blanching even further under her glare.

The wind picks up outside, an unearthly howl, its intangible touch forcing great frothy hillocks of water against the rim of jagged rocks that line the island. There were moments, way too many of them these days, where hurling myself into that churning sea was all too tempting. It beckoned to me like a siren's irresistible call when the dementors hovered outside, their rattling breaths sucking at my soul, rending it confetti. Surely Death had to be easier to endure. How ironic that I who once revelled in the pain and the slow deaths of others now am tempted by the very thing I so easily delivered.

Curled up in my cot, I pull the thin blankets as close as I can. I never had the solid ripples of muscles that my brother Rodolphus had and now, looking down at my hands, I laugh quietly, knowing that Azkaban has stripped what flesh there was from me. My veins stand out so prominently against the white of my skin, they're like blue-coloured vines wrapping themselves around a dying tree trunk. _We will wait! He will rise again and will come for us, he will reward us beyond any of his supporters! We alone were faithful!_ But I'm tired of waiting. How many years more! I don't want to die in here. It was so easy to believe back then, so easy to be faithful.

A dementor glides by, its cloaked and hooded form briefly illuminated by a streak of lightning as it snakes across the sky outside. The storm is close, very close. The dementor moves on, sensing no happy thoughts in here to feed on. There is only despair, and madness. _Are you truly mad if you know you are mad?_

Lightning flashes again and I look down, seeing my distorted reflection in a pool of water that had gathered at my feet. _I was young and now I have grown old, so very old_ . It's always a shock when I see what Azkaban has done to me. All I see is a sick, twisted version of my face. _How can that be me?_ My reddish-brown hair hangs in stringy cords around my face, a greasy mane now liberally flecked with grey. The only spots of colour on my face come from the dark contusions under my eyes and from the threads of red that discolour the whites of my eyes. All except the left. Nothing cuts across the cloud that has settled over it.


End file.
